Donnerstag, 26. April 2018

FIRE & BLOOD : On The Way / George R. R. Martin in: Not a Blog April 25, 2018

No, winter is not coming… not in 2018, at least. You’re going to have to keep waiting for THE WINDS OF WINTER.You will, however, be able to return to Westeros this year, as I suggested back over on Live Journal.Archmaester Gyldayn has at last completed and delivered the first
half of his monumental history of the Targaryen kings of Westeros, FIRE & BLOOD, and Bantam Spectra and HarperCollins Voyager will be releasing the hardcover on November 20, I am thrilled to say.I’ve seen the archmaester’s manuscript. Since it was handwritten on
vellum with a quill pen, he required my help in transcribing the text to
a more modern format: WordStar 4.0, on a DOS computer. Took a while,
but a few weeks ago I was able to ship it off to my editors on both
sides of the Atlantic, and to my foreign representatives for all my
publishers around the world. Some of my foreign publishers will be
releasing their editions simultaneously with the US and UK hardbacks;
others may need to wait for translation from the Common Tongue.It’s a hefty book, almost a thousand manuscript pages (okay, 989, if
you want to be precise). That’s not quite as long as A GAME OF THRONES
or any of the later volumes in A SONG FOR ICE AND FIRE, but there’s a
lot of reading there, and I hope you’ll enjoy it. This first volume
covers all the Targaryen kings from Aegon I (the Conquerer) to the
regency of Aegon III (the Dragonbane), along with their wives, wars,
siblings, children, friends, rivals, laws, travels, and sundry other
matters. For those not up on your Westerosi history, that’s Aegon I,
Aenys, Maegor the Cruel, Jaehaerys I (the Conciliator), Viserys I, Aegon
II (and Rhaenyra), and Aegon III (the regency). Oh, and there are
dragons too.Lotsof dragons.Of course, the story doesn’t end with the regents of Aegon III.
There is a lot more history to come, and Archmaester Gyldayn will get to
all that too, in FIRE & BLOOD, Volume Two. But that one is a few
years down the pike. So don’t get impatient. Gyldayn will get to it
eventually, but he’s old, and so am I, and we both have other projects
to tend to as well. The Citadel puts a lot of demands on an
archmaester’s time.Oh, and I almost forgot the best part: FIRE AND BLOOD will be
illustrated throughout. No, it won’t be a huge coffee table book with
art on every page, like A WORLD OF ICE & FIRE… but there will be
lots of lots of interior artwork. Think more along the lines of the
special anniversary edition of A GAME OF THRONES that we did a few years
ago, or the gorgeous hardcover of A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS, the
Dunk & Egg collection. We’ll have more than 75 black & white
illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley.And here’s a peek at the US cover, plus an illustration by Doug Wheatley: